


Modern Love

by cirquedusorrel



Category: Captain America (Movies), Marvel Cinematic Universe, The Avengers (Marvel Movies)
Genre: F/M, ended up somewhat of a character study of Natasha
Language: English
Status: Completed
Published: 2015-01-19
Updated: 2015-01-19
Packaged: 2018-03-08 06:04:08
Rating: Mature
Warnings: No Archive Warnings Apply
Chapters: 1
Words: 1,582
Publisher: archiveofourown.org
Story URL: https://archiveofourown.org/works/3198158
Author URL: https://archiveofourown.org/users/cirquedusorrel/pseuds/cirquedusorrel
Summary: <blockquote class="userstuff">
              <p>Natasha knows Tony is a self-absorbed narcissistic asshole but she doesn’t care. She’s cold in places other people are warm. She loves that she doesn’t have to melt for him.</p>
            </blockquote>





	Modern Love

+++++

Natasha has half her shirt unbuttoned when she looks up to give Tony an exasperated look. She’d expected him to be all over her like he had when she was the flirty, obliging Natalie Rushman.

Tony’s watching her with his hands in his pockets. He’s interested in her body, Natasha can tell by the way his eyes keep darting to her hands and the curve of her boobs in the shirt, but he’s also looking at her face. So he’s just as interested in Natasha the person.

She arches an eyebrow.

“I still don’t trust you, _Natalie.”_

Natasha rolls her eyes. Tony had a tendency to get caught up on minor, mostly insignificant details. “It’s sex, not a relationship.” Natasha undoes the clasp on her bra, before tossing it to the ground to join her shirt, and stands before him half naked and unashamed. “I trust you with _this.”_

Tony takes another long moment and looks at her from head to feet. He slows down at her naked breasts but she can feel him taking her in as a whole—a whole person. It might have bothered her another time that he was hesitating but she liked that he thought about it; that without his suit (and even with it) he was defenseless before her.

She liked that Tony Stark fully knew how dangerous and deceitful she was and still moved forward to place one gentle kiss on her lips, sealing his fate.

+++++

She dates a lawyer, for a little while. He’s smart and perceptive and the sex is good.

Three months in, he gets mad because she missed date night and they have their third real argument. He yells and she yells and it feels as real as it can be. Even if, maybe, she’s just playing along.

He’s smart, though, and as they wind down he just sighs and tells her, “I just can’t tell if you want me or if you just want someone.”

If he was a mark, she knows she could have him convinced of her undying love within a few minutes. She’s off the clock though so she keeps silent.

“I just need to know that if I disappeared tomorrow you’d miss me,” he adds.

“I’d look for you.”

_It’s not the same the thing._

They always want that at some point. To see Natalia, to see humanity reflected in her eyes. For her to soften and let them in to her deepest places.

 But Natalia died and her hidden moments are not filled with warmth or loneliness but the regret born of almost a hundred successful assassinations.

+++++

Sleeping with Tony becomes her bad habit. It doesn’t even happen that often at first because she’s helping Steve with his chase after the Winter Soldier and then helping Clint when he decides that he _has_ to help Coulson with his little group of ex SHIELDers.

Still she finds herself in New York often enough and she’ll never ever actually tell Stark but he wasn’t completely without his charms.

+++++

No matter how much Tony pleads with her, she has no plans to get down on her knees and blow him under his desk at Stark Industries. Then Tony offers to get on his knees and eat her out from under his desk at Stark Industries.

+++++

There comes a point where she’s spending 5 maybe 6 nights a week at the Stark Tower on Stark’s floor. It’s not really a thing. She’s still got her own apartment in Manhattan (and Queens).

The Avengers route their missions through the Stark Tower and she never really got around to moving into the rooms that Tony has set aside for her. Clint keeps giving her looks when he leaves the Tower after meetings.

She takes the train down to Brooklyn on a Sunday morning to retrieve Clint from his apartment.

Clint fishes through the dirty dishes in his sink before he comes out with a bright purple mug that only has chip in it. He grabs the coffee pot off the heat and starts pouring himself a cup of black coffee. Natasha thinks she sees lumps in the coffee as he pours. He lifts the coffee pot in her direction in what she’s sure he means as a generous gesture.

When she shakes her head no, Clint just shrugs and puts the coffee pot back down.

“So,” Clint starts after a long sip, “have you moved in with Stark?”

“He’s got the nicest mattress on east coast,” Natasha says with the straightest face she can manage.

Clint just sips his disgusting coffee from what Natasha is sure is the only intact mug he has in his apartment.

+++++

Clint likes to call her his work-wife but its Tony’s eye she catches when she finds one of their teammate’s behavior ridiculous. Clint makes her feel human and Tony makes her feel like her.

+++++

Rhodey has been making significant looks at her for the last hour. She knows that he wants to talk to her about Tony but she just really doesn’t want to talk about Tony. Still when Steve looks to her for permission to leave, she nods her head. Steve takes Sam, Bruce, and Clint with him clearing the room.

Rhodey keeps his distance and Natasha appreciates it. She doesn’t like men that try to intimidate her physically. It never actually works.

“Do you want a drink?” Rhodey asks.

“Scotch.”

Rhodey gives her a look and Natasha remembers belatedly that it’s Tony’s favorite drink. She’d sigh because she’d liked it before her thing with Stark but it’ll probably make Rhodey even more suspicious.

“I’m worried about you and Tony,” Rhodey says.

“Is this the shovel talk? I’ve always thought that only happened in 90s movies.”                            

Rhodey laughs. “It’s nothing like that. I’m Tony’s best friend but I’ve also fought side by side with you.”

Natasha shrugs, “there’s nothing to worry about. We sleep together on occasion.”

“That’s what Tony said.”

“We’re on the same page then,” Natasha says.

Rhodey snorts but holds his peace. Natasha counts that as a win.

+++++

Sometimes they roleplay and she puts on a little act in front of the others and without fail Tony supports her. It’s fun in front of potential allies and enemies alike. Clint is too even tempered to indulge the part of her that likes the theatrics but Tony enjoys the ridiculous little farces and she can’t deny herself the feeling of slipping into someone else’s skin. But when they have sex and Tony’s goatee is scratching the inside of her thighs and she’s rolling her hip trying her hardest not to grab his hair, it’s only ever the two of them in bed

Sometimes, all the times, it feels like she is never so much Natasha and he is never so much Tony as when their bodies curl around each other.

+++++

She has lunch with Pepper Potts. Largely because Pepper had discovered Tony going down on her while they were in his office at Stark Industries but also because she respected Ms. Potts even if she didn’t like her. 

The restaurant Pepper chooses is bright and cheery and Pepper is dressed like she expects to meet the Board.

“I wanted to talk to you about Tony,” Pepper starts after the waiter has delivered their food.

“Tony had a mother,” Natasha says. It’s something that had been a constant thought through Pepper and Tony’s ill-wrought relationship

“What?”

“He doesn’t need another one,” Natasha explains.

Pepper cuts a piece from her steak and takes a very prim bite.

“I know. We broke up for good reason, Miss Romanov.

The waiter comes back with a bottle of Merlot.

“Are you two in love?” Pepper asks her.

“No.”

“Probably for the best,” Pepper says.

Their conversation turns to small talk for the rest of lunch.

+++++

 “Tasha.”

Natasha is curled up around Tony with her face buried in his neck.

“-tasha,” Tony whines again. Somewhere in the far corner of his room a cellphone is ringing.

The sound fills the room.

“JARVIS, turn it off!” Tony demands.

The cellphone keeps ringing. 

“Sir, I’d have to hack into the phone company’s network to turn off her phone. Miss Romanov does not use a Stark Phone.”

Tony groans. Natasha can feel him pulling his legs back. It annoys her. She had plans for the morning. There were no operations, no interrogations, and no missions. She was going to be lazy all morning long and make Stark be lazy with her.

Tony may have been a spoiled rich boy who had been raised to be lazy, but Natasha was determined to a morning of leisure. And her determination was fortified by years of KGB training.

Tony continues to edge out from under her. Natasha pushes her hand into his boxers.

“If you stay in bed….” Natasha whispers

“Romanov, stop trying to manipulate me,” Tony says.

She rubs herself against his thigh and moans, “Tony.”

Two hours later they’re still in bed and Natasha smiles against his chest.

+++++

 “Does it bother you that you can’t tell when I’m lying?” Natasha asks.

But she’s really asking: _Do you need to control me?_

“I’m never going to trust you.”

A long, long time ago Natasha would have wept at those words but now…

…she sinks into a kiss.

+++++

“Do you love him?” asks half a dozen different people.

“Love is for children,” Natasha tells Tony Stark somewhere in Europe after a hard mission.

“I don’t do love Romanov. This is something decidedly more modern.”


End file.
